must have existed in the minds of the first disciples, bringing them into a state which prepared them to receive without questioning the rumours which were gradually moulded into a semblance of historical consistency. This theory at least proves this,--given the two facts of God's power and justice, and of Christ's nature, as acknowledged by the Christian, the resurrection, if proved on other grounds, will find no obstacle to its reception in our moral consciousness. But the very fact that such a hope exists, one which, if fulfilled, transcends all human longings, carrying with it, as St. Paul shows, the pledge and the only pledge of our personal redintegration, will but make the inquirer careful to prove every link in the chain of evidence. And here we have to remark that, so far from having that assumed expectation, His disciples were utterly in despair after the crucifixion. With their Master's last breath their last hope departed. They treated the first accounts which reached them as idle, they did not believe till they had the evidence of their senses; "then were they glad, when they saw the Lord." It is a remarkable, not to say unique, combination of two conditions for the perfect establishment of an ascertainable fact, that on the one side it should be in perfect congruity with an eternal principle, and on the other that it should be witnessed by persons wholly unprepared for its occurrence, and attested under circumstances which make it impossible to doubt their sincerity. That the attestation was given, that it was confirmed by outward effects otherwise psychologically inexplicable, by an immediate and complete change in the character of the disciples, and by the rapid triumph of the religion so attested, these and kindred points you will find discussed in every treatise on Christian evidences: they are, in fact, not open to reasonable doubt. Weigh more especially the attestation of St. Paul, both as one who knew previously all that could be alleged against the belief, as one whose strong intellect and strong prejudices rendered him inaccessible to mere subjective impressions, and as a man of whose conversion no rational, no intelligible account has ever been given which does not involve the fact of a personal manifestation of Christ, and then you will have all that can be needed for steadfast conviction, evidence complete and adequate for its purpose, proving that Jesus was shown "to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead." (Rom. i.)